With the New Year comes a new class of malicious attack that can impact IT systems. This time, the attack is hardware based, affecting mostly Intel based systems, and to some extent, AMD systems as well.

Here is a list of resources that highlight what it is all about and how to mitigate against this new threat. In the words of Microsoft, “Don’t panic.”

Basically, if you need to connect a Windows 10 client to Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2, which is probably the most common scenario, you will need to perform a manual client connector installation. A fix for the server is scheduled to be released on 17 November 2015.

Another common scenario would be the joining of the client connector for a Windows 10 client to Small Business Server 2011. In this case, 2 lines need to be added to the XML file on the server, which is located at C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Bin\WebApp\ClientDeployment\packageFiles\supportedOS.xml. Add the following 2 lines.

The Essentials Server team have just published a blog post which gives you an at-a-glance look at what features are supported and not supported with the six current (and recently past) SBS and Essentials SKUs.

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Pointer to the SBS Team blog on the top issues faced and corresponding resolutions for SBS 2011. This is a useful reference – http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2014/02/18/top-support-solutions-for-windows-small-business-server-2011-standard.aspx

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In the past few months, I have been working with some clients on moving their existing Small Business Server (SBS) systems over to the Microsoft cloud based Office 365 email system. There are a number of issues and possible gotchas in making this transition which will be discussed here. Note that this blog post is targeted to the small business community with existing SBS 2003, SBS 2008 or SBS 2011 deployments that are looking to move their email services to Office 365, while maintaining their existing network. We will not be considering Office365 migration method in this move as the costs and complexity of implementing this in a small business are prohibitive.

The pre-requisite when performing such a migration, is to plan and work out a migration path for email services. Questions to be considered are:

Do we need to migrate all the old email data, or should some be archived?

Are there old accounts that can be decommissioned?

What distribution groups and contacts need to be migrated across?

Are there any Send As and Send on Behalf of permissions that need to be addressed?

Are there individual permissions on Calendars and Folders that need to be recreated?

How will we move the old email data from Exchange on premises to Office 365?

Moving Email data from On-premises Exchange to Office 365

Central to the entire issue is retaining old emails and settings. There are a number of ways to move the data across to Office365.

Export-Import. This method involves exporting the current emails to PST and re-importing them into Office 365 once Outlook has been configured.

Migrationwiz.com is a fast and easy way to move mailboxes at a low cost.

Office365 Migration wizard. This is a built in tool from Microsoft to help in performing a migration from on-premises Exchange. It requires an Azure subscription and the installation of the Directory Sync tool and has some tough pre-requisites for SMBs. The process is detailed on technet here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj573653.aspx

One main drawback from using any method that does not synchronize the Office 365 platform to your existing Active Directory is dealing with the issue of Auto-Complete or Suggested Contacts. After the migration, it is quite likely that replies on old emails or emails sent using the stored contact information in Auto-Complete or Suggested Contacts will result in a Undeliverable error as follows:

Create Users and Set up Domain in Office 365

In this step, you need to set up and recreate all the users, distribution groups, and domains to match what you have on-premises. In the public DNS, set the MX records to point to your on-premises Exchange until you are ready to receive emails at the Office 365 service. Ensure that the Autodiscover and other DNS services are set up properly.

Setting up the Outlook Profile

One of the main issues with setting up Outlook for Office 365 on an existing SBS domain is the existing autodiscover configuration set up for each user account. The following steps should be followed to ensure a simple, incident free set up of Outlook on Office 365.

Log in to the PC as the user. The configuration is done per user.

Update your PC with a the latest patches, especially Microsoft Office patches and Service Packs.

Log in to the Office 365 portal using the users email address and assigned password.

Install software and connect it to Office 365

You will need to sign in to Office 365 again using the user’s credentials.

The Office 365 setup application will note that manual steps will be required (which involves setting up the Outlook profile as detailed here).

Now you can Add a new Outlook Profile from Control Panel-Mail (32-bit). You will see the existing Outlook Profile there, which can be kept as a backup, as you may need it later for export to PST purposes.

The local autodiscover settings that have been configured earlier will kick in and set up the account. You will need to log in using the Office 365 credentials.

You can also add the on-premises Exchange profile to this new profile, if you are planning to export the old email data or manually transfer information over to the office 365 account.

With smaller sites, this is a quick and easy way to manage your Office 365 migration. With larger installations, the Office 365 migration wizard using Azure and Directory Sync may be a more efficient method. In the end, it is up to the business owner, with advice from the IT consultant, to work out which method is preferred.

UPDATE: There is a really good article on how to use Azure Active Directory to handle password sync between your local AD and the new Office 365 AD – www.infostream.cc/dirsync-aadsync

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Http://connect is used in Small Business Server and Windows Server Essentials to configure and join client computers to the domain. There is a known issue with Trend Micro’s Worry Free Business Security suite version 7 and 8 which causes this issue.

The solution is to disable (NOT DELETE) the CGI-exe and ISAPI-dll modules on the SBS Client Deployment Applications Website in IIS.

To do this, you need to start up the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Note: There are 2 of these located in Administrative tools. Select the non-numbered (version 7) one.

Expand to the SBS Client Deployment Applications Home and locate Handler Mappings.

I have been seeing quite a number of systems coming up with this error message when attempting to install the Client Connector Software for SBS 2011 Essentials.

“Error: Cannot connect the computer to the server because either another software installation is in progress, or, the computer has a restart pending. Either complete the installation process, or, restart the computer and try to connect again.”

The first thing to do is obvious – Reboot the computer. But then again, there would not be anything to blog if it were that easy. Obviously, that has been attempted and the error remains. Apparently, this is often caused by programs not cleaning up their installation settings.

The fix is fairly simple, if you can remember where the registry setting is.

Open up Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager. Rename the key named PendingFileRenameOperation to something else.